A Bomb-Sniffing Navy Dolphin Accidentally Found A Rare 130-Year-Old Torpedo

A Navy dolphin
training to look for mines off the coast of San Diego found a
museum-worthy 19th-century torpedo on the seafloor, military
officials said.

The brass-coated, retro wonder of technology was one of the first
self-propelled torpedoes used by the U.S. Navy. Just 50 of these
so-called Howell torpedoes were made and only one other example
has been recovered; it sits in the Naval Undersea Museum in
Keyport, Wash., outside of Seattle.

The 130-year-old, 11-foot-long (3.3 meters) weapon was discovered
back in March during a mine-hunting exercise that the Space
and Naval warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) was
conducting with bottlenose dolphins. [Top
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"Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to
man. They can detect mines and other potentially dangerous
objects on the ocean floor that are acoustically difficult
targets to detect," operations supervisor Braden Duryee, of the
SSC Pacific Biosciences Division, said in a statement.

Dolphins use their natural sonar, called echolocation, to
determine the size and shape of underwater objects by sending out
a series of clicks that bounce off their targets and boomerang
back to them. The marine mammals can be trained to report what
they have found to human handlers using certain yes or no
responses. Handlers can then investigate what the dolphins find
by sending the animals to mark an object's location with a
weighted buoy line.

In this case, one of the dolphins indicated to its handler that
it had detected a minelike target. The recovery dive team
initially thought the dolphin had found an old tail section off
an aerial drop mine, according to a statement from SSC Pacific,
but officials soon realized they were handling a much rarer
artifact.

"It was apparent in the first 15 minutes that this was something
that was significant and really old," Christian Harris,
operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division,
said in a statement. "Realizing that we were the first people to
touch it or be around it in over 125 years was really exciting."

The Howell torpedo had a 132-lb (60 kilogram) flywheel that would
be spun prior to launch. With a warhead filled with 100 lbs (45
kg) of gun cotton, the weapon had a range of 400 yards and could
reach speeds of 25 knots, military officials said.

"It was the first torpedo that could be released into the ocean
and follow a track," Harris said. "Considering that it was made
before electricity was provided to U.S. households, it was pretty
sophisticated for its time."

The torpedo is being kept in a tank of water to prevent erosion
on its surface. The historical weapon will eventually be shipped
to the Naval History and Heritage Command at the Washington
Navy Yard.

Navy officials said last year that the U.S. military may
begin retiring
its dolphins in 2017 in favor of cheaper mine-hunting
robots.

Dolphins' amazing sonar ability can be a blessing and a curse for
marine mammal-military relations; the animals are acutely
vulnerable to high-powered naval sonar used during military
tests, and past naval exercises have been linked to dolphin
strandings.